Spending Connected with Values

One fantastic benefit that tagged along the backside of technology is the ability to gather information with great ease, process all the responses and facts, and communicate the findings to people on a large scale.  People can now take universal statistics regarding spending and resources and other such things.  Those people can crunch numbers and put their results on the internet for anyone with a laptop to be able to stumble across.  Today, I want to share some shocking spending statistics upon which I stumbled this past year.  The numbers compare annual universal spending with the spending of certain developed countries.

Annual Expenditure in billions (U.S. currency)

Education worldwide- $6	Cosmetics in US- $8
Water and sanitation worldwide- $9	Ice Cream in Europe- $11
Reproductive health worldwide- $12	Perfumes in Eur. and US.- $12
Basic health and nutrition worldwide- $13	Pet Food in Eur. and US.- $17
	Alcoholic drinks in Europe- $105
	Narcotic drugs worldwide- $400

(“State of Human Development” 37)

Every difference of one in these numbers is a whole billion dollars.

Looking at these numbers at first simply makes me sad.  Then, lots of different questions run through my mind to wonder how these sorts of numbers came to be true.  I am a person who likes to ask the "why" question-I believe most times it gets to the heart of the issue.  This statistic is made from the spending of people-just like myself in their own circumstances.  So, clearly, people in general in developed countries value alcohol significantly more than education or health (if we based people's value on how much money they put into something, which definitely is a significant and moderately accurate tester).  

As a person, I analyze myself in light of these statistics why I might have spent more money on pet food than the sanitation of water around the world?  Maybe these statistics do not directly apply to you, but they should still make you pause and think what sorts of things you do spend your money on.  What categories of stuff does your spending add to?  Is that the best use it could be put to?  What do you really need?  I cannot ask that question without giving my own thought to the answer-everything in the table above (even health) will fade away eventually, so looking at life in the long run I believe a person's greatest need is spiritual and in relation to eternity (the LONG run).  Perhaps that is a matter for another blog.